Meckin Robert
Sociology, University of Manchester.
The Cathie Marsh Institute, University of Manchester.
Sci Technol Human Values. 2020 Nov;45(6):1220-1241. doi: 10.1177/0162243919893757. Epub 2019 Dec 9.
Proponents of engineering and design approaches to biology aim to make interdisciplinary bioscience research faster and more reproducible. This paper outlines and deploys a practice-based approach to analyses of infrastructure that focuses on the routine epistemic activities and charts how two such routines are unsettled and resettled in the background of epistemic culture. This paper describes attempts to bring about new research infrastructures in synthetic biology using robotics and software-enabled design. A focus on the skills of pipetting shows how established manual labor has to be reconfigured to fit with novel robotic automations. An analysis of curating frozen materials shows that automated design presents new problems for the established activities of storing and retrieving biological materials. These movements, while transient, have implications for organizing interdisciplinary collaboration, research productivity, and enabling greater reproducibility. This paper explores the idea of infrastructure as practice and shows how this has important implications for studies of research infrastructures. This article discusses the main contributions of this approach for analysts of infrastructure in terms of movements, temporalities, and ethics and offers suggestions for what the research implies for synthetic biology.
生物学工程与设计方法的支持者旨在使跨学科生物科学研究更快且更具可重复性。本文概述并运用了一种基于实践的方法来分析基础设施，该方法聚焦于日常认知活动，并描绘了在认知文化背景下，两种此类日常活动是如何被打破并重新确立的。本文描述了利用机器人技术和软件驱动设计在合成生物学中创建新研究基础设施的尝试。对移液技能的关注表明，既定的体力劳动必须进行重新配置，以适应新型机器人自动化操作。对冷冻材料管理的分析表明，自动化设计给生物材料的储存和检索等既定活动带来了新问题。这些变动虽然是暂时的，但对组织跨学科合作、研究生产力以及实现更高的可重复性具有影响。本文探讨了将基础设施视为实践的理念，并展示了这对研究基础设施的研究具有重要意义。本文从变动、时间性和伦理方面讨论了这种方法对基础设施分析人员的主要贡献，并就该研究对合成生物学的意义提出了建议。
